Education Can ONLY Be Offered: How K-12 Schools Will Save Democracy

This book provides a unique large-scale perspective on the challenges of K-12 education leadership today. Putting schools into the context of the four billion year history of Life suggests that one of the most marginal segments of the industry has the most to teach those in the mainstream. The mainstream is off-track because of understandable but mistaken ideas about learning and human nature that create a powerful illusion that misguides system-scale efforts to improve the outcomes of schooling. Dispelling the illusion requires educators to rethink the distinction between being a teacher and an instructor. Teaching needs to be about the creation of learning contexts while instruction is about helping students accurately grasp content. A more careful approach to instructing children is needed. The book presents design criteria to help schools change in the right way and a map of how school organizations can do better by both their teachers and students.